Proper nutrition is a key element to maintaining animal health and to increasing the overall productivity of animals. This is especially true for farm animals such as cattle (beef cattle, dairy cattle, etc.), swine, sheep, and the like. An important element of a nutritionally balanced diet are minerals and other components such as a suitable nitrogen source. Although some minerals may be inherently included in bulk animal feed (e.g., alfalfa, grain material, etc.), it is often desirable to supplement the bulk feed with additional minerals and other nutrients to provide optimum animal performance and health.
In the past, the mineral and/or nitrogen content of animal feed has been supplemented by adding minerals to the animal feed at the time of feeding in the form of a granule added to the feed. This was traditionally done by spreading the minerals over the top of the animal feed in the feeding area. The minerals were often much smaller than the bulk feed and thus tended to migrate to the bottom of the feeder before the animal could eat it. Also, the animals often eat the feed in a way that scatters the minerals around the area, which further reduces the amount of minerals the animals intake. Because of these and other factors, the amount of minerals that the animal received varied widely from one feeding to the next. The health and/or performance of the animals suffered as a result.
One way to make the mineral supplement more suitable for the animal to eat is to pellet the mineral supplement. Unfortunately, a mineral pellet is difficult to produce using conventional pelleting equipment because, during pelleting, the minerals tend to score the surface of the die and may even plug the die. This is especially true for mineral pellets having a high mineral content. Also, pellets having a high mineral content were often crumbly and generally considered low quality—so much so that they were of little use as an animal feed.
It would be desirable to provide a mineral supplement having a high concentration of a mineral source and/or nitrogen source. A mineral supplement of this nature requires less material to be processed to provide the same nutritional value as other lower mineral concentration supplements. Thus, the processing of the mineral supplement is made more efficient. In addition, mineral supplements with higher mineral concentrations can be transported and sold in bulk while reducing capacity requirements of storage facilities and shipping containers. A mineral supplement is described herein which typically has an elevated mineral source and/or nitrogen source concentration that is capable of being processed in a conventional pellet mill.